Abstract

Both positive bias temperature instability (PBTI) and hot carrier ageing (HCA) are major challenges to the reliability of modern CMOS technologies. This work reviews the recent progresses in understanding the defects. An as-grown-generation (AG) framework is proposed, based on the energy profile, charging kinetics and generation. Three types of electron traps are identified: As-grown cyclic electron traps (ACET), generated cyclic electron traps (GCET), and generated anti-neutralization electron traps (ANET). PBTI only has ACET and ANET, while HCA also causes GCET and create new interface states. This lays the foundation for modelling PBTI and HCA.